Jason
Another fun mil SF romp. Andromeda McKee is fast becoming one of my favorite fictional women. Dietz has managed to create a character who is tough as nails when she has to be, but also can also show emotion and vulnerability. Andromeda avoids falling into the trope of basically being a female version of a male action hero.
I can't wait to finish the trilogy.
I read this book several years because I love military science fiction and thought that this would be a good one to jump into.
It honestly wasn't. The premise was interesting, though I thought it weird that no one was questioning why a cargo ship always seemed to be getting into all sorts of peril and deadly danger. Of course, the book reveals why - Because the captain is secretly working for the government and doing missions under the guise of being but a humble trader, selling his cabbages or whatever. - but it's just weird that nobody like “WTF?”.
What really bugged me is how under-armed the main character is. Her whole goal with serving on The Glorious Fool is to rack up the required years of experience so she can apply to join an elite special forces unit. But despite the Fool's rep, Devi only shows up with three weapons:
1. A plasma shotgun that can only fire a few shots before it's battery is drained (though it does double duty as a club)
2. A handgun that fires big armor piercing bullets, but with massive recoil (that can break arms if you're not wearing powered armor when shooting it).
3. And a blade coated in white phosphorus...that can only be used for 180 seconds before the fire has to be extinguished, less the phosphorus turns the blade brittle.
I know that it's probably dumb to criticize a book because of that, but I mean...come on. Devi is serving on a ship with a rep like the Fool's and she's only packing three weapons, two of them basically worthless?
For a character that's supposed to be a kicker of ass, Devi sure ends up on the wrong end of the ass whoopings. Almost every fight scene ends with her getting wrecked (or rekted, as the internet likes to say) and having to be rescued. I don't think her chances getting into that elite unit are looking good.
As for the romance, it was rather bland from what I remember of it. A Hallmark Christmas movie does romance better than what this book did. I didn't realize that there even was a romance element when I started reading and still wasn't 100% sure mid-way through.
I don't know, I might re-read this book soon and see if my opinion has changed in the six years since. As of right now, Fortune's Pawn is sitting somewhere between a 2.5 and a 3 stars.
I have no idea what the hell I just read. It was weird, very weird. The ending was a disappointment because there was no payoff, or at least I didn't feel like there was. It felt like things were building to a climax...and it just never happened.
Edit: I'm revising my rating from three down to 1.5 stars. I kept thinking about this story today and the more I did, it's faults became more glaring. The development of the relationship between Agnes and Zoe had next to none. One minute the former is espousing the history of an apple peeler she's trying to sell to the latter, the next they're engaged in some bizarro sadist relationship conducted completely via email and instant messaging. There's no build-up over a long period of time so there's no real tension or even since of dread as Agnes descends (like a bowling ball dropped off the top of the Empire State Building) into madness.As for the "disturbing" nature of the plot, it isn't. What happens between Agnes and Zoe is weird and not much else. I was expecting to be creeped or grossed out to the point that I would DNF the book and honestly? We're probably talking like PG-13 for the most part. You could maybe stretch it out to an R rating (since I appear to have slipped into movie ratings somehow), but it's no more disturbing than like the first Halloween movie.
I think ultimately, the book would have been better if it had been longer, since then more substance, more meat could have been added to it.
Fun book and interesting universe I plan to revisit in the future. My only complaint is that Tully's character development never developed, at least not to a satisfactory level. I get that since the story is told through the eyes of Pyanfar and thus filtered through her own perceptions and biases, it would have been nice to have seen Tully move further beyond half-crazed and scared.
3.5 stars
It was a good thriller, but there were certain oddities that stuck out. For example, the main character, John Knox, apparently had a bottomless pocket full of baseball caps and sunglasses because at one point, he was switching to new ones every several blocks as he walked.
His idea of “questioning” dudes basically consisted of hitting them in the crotch until their nuts and tonsils traded places.
So first off, I just want to point out that I bought this book way back in 1998 and aside from one failed attempt back then, did not read it until now. This thing's been chunking around with me for 23 years!
Review-wise, I was originally going to give it 3 stars, but realized that that would be overly-generous, so I'm going to settle on somewhere between 2.7 - 2.8 stars. I didn't hate it, but it also isn't making onto any “Best of” list. The book just has too many issues to climb above that.
First off, the book felt dated even for something published in 1998 and I've long suspected that it was written much, much earlier, like maybe the early 90s or even the 80s. For example, the computers are referred to as “compunits” and the description evokes those table-mounted computers from the original Star Trek.
Second, is that Rick Shelley really, really wanted the reader to know that the Dirigent Mercenary Corps is a 100% all beef, baby. There are no women mercenaries, something that Shelley drives home by repeatedly using the word “men” just in case you hadn't already figured out that the DMC is a sausage fest. Indeed, there are almost no women in the book at all. The one that does get mentioned is the wife of one of the mercs. It's just odd and funny because I believe at around the time Officer-Cadet was published, other military science fiction writers were including women in their books. That's one of the other reasons why I think this book is much older than its pub date.
Sidenote: For whatever reason, Shelley decided that that aforementioned merc should be a cuckhold who is not only fine with that the fact that his friends have had sex with his wife (who works as a waitress and sex worker) and encourages the main character, Lon Nolan, to do the same.
Yeaaah...
ANYWAYS, the other problem with the book is that for being one of the top mercenary companies in the galaxy, the Dirigent Mercenary Corps. is...not great. They have their own planet, but keep their entire military force located in one base. That's real convenient for anyone who attacks them, because all they'd have to do is hit one target instead of having to contend with multiple.
They also don't seem to have any ground vehicles because they don't take any with them to the planet they're deployed to. The only transportation they did bring are shuttles that have to pull the dual role of transports and close-air support. So what we get is a lot of walking. A lot of walking. Pretty much a good chunk of the book is just Lon and his unit traveling from place to place on foot. It's just incomprehensible that a military force would show up without ground vehicles.
I'm not sure they even brought machine guns either. They have rifles, grenade launchers, and beamers (directed energy weapons), but I don't recall there being any mention of machine guns. Same with sniper rifles. Really, it's almost like these guys showed up with no heavy weapons whatsoever and were like “YEAH! LET'S DO THIS! YEEHAW, MOTHERTRUCKERS!”
If I'm being honest and I'm trying not to come off as a jerk because the man's been dead for like 20 years, but I don't think Rick Shelley really knew up from down when it came to knowing how a military works.
One final gripe is that we don't find out the motivation of the rebels the MC and the rest of the mercs have been fighting until the end of the book, when it's revealed that they're the remnants of a hyper-fanatical religious cult that tried to take over the Earth, who were dumped on the planet after they lost. It felt like it was tacked on because Shelley needed to throw something in there.
Overall, Officer-Cadet was just okay. I didn't hate it, but I'm likely never going to re-read it again.
